Congratulations Michael Cook, Winner of the 2014 Holberg Prize

A hearty congratulations are in order for Michael Cook: he has been named the winner of the 2014 Holberg Prize, an award given annually to a scholar who has made outstanding contributions to research in the arts and humanities, social sciences, law, or theology.

The 2014 Holberg committee says of the laureate that, “Michael Cook is one of today’s leading experts on the history and religious thought of Islam. He has reshaped fields that span Ottoman studies, the genesis of early Islamic polity, the history of the Wahhabiya movement, and Islamic law, ethics, and theology. His contribution to the entire field, from Islam’s genesis to the present, displays a mastery of textual, economic, and social approaches.”

Michael Cook is the Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, and is widely considered one of today’s leading experts on the history and religious thoughtof Islam. His work explicitly asserts the role of religion in the formation of Islamic civilization, stretching from the medieval period to the present. His newest book, Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective (2014) carefully considers the connection between modern fundamentalism and the political role of religion in Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. He is also the author of Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought and A Brief History of the Human Race, among other books. He is also the general editor of The New Cambridge History of Islam.

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